In the conventional image processing, a scanner provided in a digital copying machine reads an image on an original document. A user designates a region of the image thus read, by specifying at least two coordinates. The image designated is subjected to processing such as edition or insertion.
To designate the region of the image, the coordinates must be specified very precisely, however. Hence, the user needs to spend much time and labor to specify the coordinates if the region has a complicated shape.
In stead of specifying the coordinates of the image region, there is provided another method by which a desired image region in an original document is specified with a marker or the like in advance, and then the original document is read by a scanner to recognize the specified image region. According to this method, however, it is very troublesome when a plurality of original documents are given for a user to manually specify each of image regions in each of the original documents.